Matthew Slater

My theology degree did not equip me to live in this world. I travelled and tried my hand at teaching and oily engineering, before immersing myself in the new multimedia technologies. I cut my programming teeth making arcade games for Ben & Jerry's at the end of the millenium. But it was hard to apply this skills really usefully. After a year in India I freed myself from the need to save for a pension and the need for female affirmation. When I came home I started my career from scratch, and learned php, using it to build up a local nonprofit. That organisation hit the big time, and I spent 2 years in Geneva getting an insight into humanitarianism, politics and strategy. Then I turned my attention to the economy and to building a really useful mutual credit system so that communities could easily start running their own economies when the shit hit the fan. The work was vast, and I didn't want to waste time working to pay rent in a place I didn't care for. I hit the road to save money, hiring a friend as intern and companion and to build up Community Forge. We stayed around Europe, visited Morocco, and India, but then the money and the freelance jobs dried up and I had to let him go. Now version 2 of the module is ready and Timebanks USA will use it, I'm attempting to live in the gift. Staying with people and communities who value my contribution. As far as possible I live without money because the debt-money we use is repugnant to me, and I don't wish to waste my energy competing for it at the expense of others. My work is to provide software for mutual credit economies. My hope is to join the mutual credit economies together so that people can reclaim the business of creating money from the banks. I believe that human nature itself has been subverted by the nefarious debt-money system, which makes an artificial scarcity which drives growth and consumption. I am looking for offers of accommodation for a month at a time around people who are interested in economics and/or keen to engage with software. my needs are few: bed, food, wifi. I work almost all of the time, but enjoy engaging with local communities. i usually have something to contribute.